What Does the New Collaboration Experience Mean to You?

For me, collaboration in business is about people working together across functions and disciplines from the C-Level suite all the way down to the mail room. It’s about the experience. When people get intellectually and emotionally involved with others through collaboration, it’s that set of experiences, thoughts, and feelings that bond them together in a common cause.

More businesses are recognizing that critical relationships with both their internal constituents and external stakeholders—employees, partners, investors, media, and customers—are about the collection of experiences and touch points those audience members and key collaborators have with their organization. So, if collaborative relationships are a continuum of experiences, then it follows that businesses should optimize those experiences for maximum impact. To learn more about how the customer care industry evolved to focus on “the complete experience,” click here.

In this age of unstructured, user-driven content like that found on Facebook or Twitter, not to mention our insatiable demand for instant information and gratification, businesses must strive to shift their focus from inside out to outside in. Customers and consumers control the conversation now, not corporations.

One company that recognizes this reality is AAA, the road service, travel, and insurance giant. Click here to read how AAA is optimizing its customer service experience using Cisco collaboration tools. Two other companies from different industries that are blazing the customer experience trail are Hilti Corporation, the international power tool leader, and Nottingham Trent University in the UK. To read their stories about creating a new collaboration experience, click here and here.

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